We live, simultaneously, in two different worlds. Ultimately, we live in the World of Nature, a world that we did not create and the world upon which all life depends. Most immediately, we inhabit a "human world" that we create ourselves. Because our human world is the result of our own choices and actions, we can say, quite properly, that we live, most immediately, in a “political world.” In this blog, I hope to explore the interaction of these two worlds that we call home.

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Gary A. Patton

I was an elected official in Santa Cruz County, California for twenty years, from 1975 to 1995. Now, I am an environmental attorney, practicing law in Santa Cruz County. If you would like to contact me, send me an email at gapatton@mac.com.

In terms of global warming, and its consequences, we are in a hole, and it's a really deep one, and getting deeper. Eduardo Porter's article makes that clear (just in case you needed any assistance in understanding where we are, in terms of the depth of the hole in which humanity now finds itself). We are in a hole, and we are all digging it deeper, daily.

Porter's article, which reported on a recent conference in Washington, D.C., suggests that "geoengineering" technologies may be the solution, or our best choice, to deal with that hole.

My observation is this: Before we start trying out new technologies that we know will have planetary-sized risks, shouldn't we first address ourselves to the fact that we are digging the hole deeper, every day?

Human beings (this is proven) don't like to look reality in the face. One of the great professors I had at Stanford, Otis Pease, used to talk about the need to be "tough minded" as we considered our situation and our options.

A "tough-minded" approach to global warming would indicate that we need, as a society, to eliminate the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels. No gasoline autos or trucks. We need to stop burning the lightbulbs after dark, in every commercial advertising display we find in our urban downtowns. We need a massive effort to plant billions of trees. We need to manufacture and install photovoltaic arrays wherever they will produce energy.

We need to stop waiting for "the market" to solve our problems. We need a common agenda that reflects the real emergency we're in.

It would be wonderful if every nation would act on this agenda simultaneously, but let's not wait around. We need to do it now. What we can do, we must do! The hole's that deep.

Maybe later, we will need to do other things, but let's pay attention to first things, first.